No, the lost books described in my entry of May 7th have not surfaced. Nor have the copies of FOUND magazine that I’d hoped to use with this post. But LW recently found an item worthy of submission to FOUND that I thought I’d share here, along with a few excerpts from the book in which it was discovered.

In case you are unfamiliar with FOUND, it is a magazine that publishes notes, lists, letters, diaries, photos, postcards, and other discarded ephemera people find in streets, playgrounds, laundromats, taxicabs, etc. These items are chosen for their appeal to our inner voyeur through their sheer banality, absurdity, inscrutability, or, occasionally, poignancy. You can check out FOUND’s website at www.foundmagazine.com for examples.

LW enjoys finding similar ephemera within the pages of used books. One of her more interesting discoveries of late was found tucked inside this 1960s era textbook used in a secretarial school or possibly a home economics class.

The item, a mimeographed worksheet for an assignment involving diet and nutrition, appears to date from the ‘60s as well. It is a chart for reporting the foods consumed for a week’s meals along with time devoted to exercise. The student who completed this chart also decided (in the interest of full disclosure?), or perhaps was instructed, to record the cigarettes she smoked. Here is her completed assignment, a snapshot into a lost world:

As a presiding spirit of a library, my nature is mostly non-corporeal. Therefore, I can understand that my readers might question my right to comment on a “real” person’s eating habits. However, my existence in the imaginal realm has acquainted me with food. After all, much of the appeal of food involves imagination. I have also familiarized myself with food through my occasional hauntings and possessions and also by browsing in the many cookbooks and food-related literature on my shelves. So I have a pretty good idea of what a nutritional human diet should look like. This is not it.

It is so “not it” that, upon reading it, I questioned the veracity of the student—Was this a joke? Was this an attempt to ridicule the assignment or the teacher? Or was it an early foray into a sixties-style rebellion? Possibly. And yet there is something terribly earnest about it. I mean, why even bring up the serving of “yellow beans” and “dish of corn?” And note the day that she consumed four aspirins. It is the same day she drinks ginger ale and something called “Team” (Tang?) instead of her usual Coke at breakfast. This rings true to me—she took the aspirins because was suffering from caffeine deprivation! Either that, or she had a headache from the beers she drank the night before. And if the Coke consumption seems a bit excessive, I have only to recall LW’s addiction to TAB that fueled her for years. And I remind you that this worksheet is from the 1960s, the indulgent “Mad Men” years, still a few years before the advent of latter-day health food and fitness movements.

My favorite thing about this chart, however, is the teacher’s one criticism of this diet in which scarcely a vegetable and nary a fruit appears. You can read it in the right margin: “More protein!”

No mention is made of the student’s excessive sugar or cigarette consumption. Even the book suggests that the main problem with a woman’s smoking is not that it might be a risk to her health, but that she might appear unfeminine in her style of smoking. These classic “blonde vs. brunette” pics show you how to avoid that. The brunette looks like she’s auditioning for a John Waters film.

The book does, however, offer some interesting advice for women on how to be popular, some of which is shown here:

One could say that the advice that a woman should “fill her mental cupboard with delectable tidbits to share with others” is prescient of blogging and social media. I shall take it to heart, even as I dream of delectable cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

OK, my apologies to Mr. Whitman. I have no idea what LW thought she was doing when she mangled his poem like that. But I did have an idea what she planned to do when she left home with two canvas bags last Saturday: buy books. Yes, she is still in the midst of the massive BIO (Books In Order) project, so it would seem an odd time to be adding even more books to the stalagmites that turn every trip to the kitchen into an obstacle course. But for LW, there is no odd time when it comes to books, particularly when her son’s old elementary school, P.S. 87, is having their spring fair and the books are cheap and the day is fine.

In fact, as Fair Day often seems to be, it was one of the finest days of the season. Leaves, doubled in size from the week’s rain, were an electric green; the sky, a neon blue. Books, looking as earnest as orphans on Adoption Day, were spread out on tables in the dappled shade, waiting to be picked over and picked up.

To be honest, however, this year’s fair was not quite the book bacchanalia of years past. Some years it seems as if half the School’s parents works in Publishing, and those years are the best. But the Upper West Side is a bookish neighborhood, and LW never returns from the Fair empty-handed or, for that matter, under-fed.

And there were marvels to admire, such as rows upon rows of neatly boxed National Geographics, bright as a field of sunflowers.

I am surprised and almost regret that she was able to resist these two sleeves of maps.

In the end, she came away with a hefty pile of books for the less than the cost of one new hardcover.

Back at home, she performed her Fair Day ritual of removing the books from her bags one by one, lingering over each in turn. It is a ritual preferably carried out on just such a summery day, with just such breezes caressing the curtains, and with just such a glass of iced tea at hand as was had.

Finally. A new project is underway here at the LW Private Library. I call it BIO—Books In Order. Start date: May 27, 2013. Estimated Finish Date: November 27, 2013. Six months. Goal set.

I know, six months seems a ridiculously long time to reorganize a home library when that home is just a small apartment. But you haven’t seen my books. Or ALL of my books. Anyway, I can’t do it by myself, and this will be a busy season for my facilitator, LW, who can do it. Maybe. But she’s kind of distracted these days, working on a shadow show project, going here and there. It’s always something.

The good news is that BIO has begun. Progress, good progress, has been made on the following sections: Memory, Perfume and Scents, Place and Space, Architecture, Cities and Urban Life, New York, Chicago, Miscellaneous Cities, Maps and Mapping, Psycho- and Humanist Geography, Museums and Collections, Science, Religion, Psychology, Philosophy, and Arts and Crafts. And yet much remains to be done. I’m giving her six months. Six months or she’ll never find a book in this house again.

Years ago, my books were in pretty good order: History here, Hollywood there, Graphic Novels in the other room. Cookbooks in the Pots & Pans drawer. Horror and SciFi beneath the bed. But over the years the books overwhelmed the shelving arrangements and had to be put wherever they could fit. And now that I’ve taken it upon myself to be a kind of Boswell to my facilitator/collector, I need to be able to find the books I want to discuss. (See my May 7, 2013 post “Lost!”) And LW, in turn, would like to carve out some living space for herself and spruce the place up.

We libraries enjoy having our shelves cleared and cleaned and stacked anew. And nothing feels as good as having our books mulled over, dusted, and gleaned, with the possible exception of a good browsing, preferably to the sound of rain on the roof. Preferably a tin roof. The whole process makes us feel alive, enervated, and renewed.

And it’s an interesting process, this sorting of the books. I enjoy reacquainting myself with books that, due to double-shelving or closet-dwelling, have been hidden away for years. It’s a kind of excavation, not just of books, but of a life, thereby echoing my purpose here: to explore the parallel tracks between one’s books and one’s life.